scholarly journals MNEMONIC CAPABILITIES: COLLECTIVE MEMORY AS A DYNAMIC CAPABILITY

2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego M. Coraiola ◽  
Roy Suddaby ◽  
William M. Foster
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
Dynamic Theory ◽  
Time History ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Dynamic Capability ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Managerial Action ◽  
Over Time

ABSTRACT Dynamic capabilities (DCs) are the processes that organizations develop to remain competitive over time. However, in spite of the importance of temporality in the development of DCs, the roles of time, history, and memory remain largely implicit. In fact, most studies focus on the past as a source of constraints and limits for managerial action. Alternatively, we advocate for a social constructionist view of the past. Our core argument is that the capacity to manage the past is a critical competence of modern organizations. We argue that organizations can manage their collective memory as resources that aid the objective reproduction and exploitation of existing routines, the interpretive reconstruction and recombination of past capabilities for adaptation to environmental change, and the imaginative extension and exploration of collective memory for anticipated scenarios and outcomes. This renewed view of time, history, and memory is better suited for a dynamic theory of competitive advantage.

Autobiographical Memory and Identities in Organizations

2020 ◽  
pp. 373-390
Author(s):  
Roy Suddaby ◽  
Majken Schultz ◽  
Trevor Israelsen
Keyword(s):  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Organizational Memory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Life Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
Narrative Constructions ◽  
Autonoetic Consciousness ◽  
Over Time

Current theories of identity in organizations assume and valorize stability of identity over time. In this chapter the authors challenge this assumption by introducing contemporary understandings of the fluidity of time in the construction of autobiographical memory. They argue that, both in individual and organizational memory, narrative constructions of the self fluidly incorporate episodes from the past, present, and future in an ongoing effort to create a coherent autobiography. They elaborate the construct of autobiographical memory as constituted by autonoetic consciousness, life narrative, and collective memory and discuss the implications for identities in organizations.

scholarly journals Rethinking history and memory in organization studies: The case for historiographical reflexivity

2020 ◽  
pp. 001872672092744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Decker ◽  
John Hassard ◽  
Michael Rowlinson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Organizational Memory ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Traces

The historic turn in organization studies has led to greater appreciation of the potential contribution from historical research. However, there is increasing emphasis on integrating history into organization studies, rather than on recognizing how accommodating history might require a reorientation. As a result, key conceptual and methodological insights from historiography have been overlooked or at times misrepresented. We identify four modes of enquiry that highlight distinctions from history about ‘how to conceptualize’ and ‘how to research’ the past. First, historical organization studies research the past primarily through reference to archival sources. Second, retrospective organizational history reconstructs the past principally from retrospective accounts, such as those generated in oral history. Third, retrospective organizational memory uses ethnography and interviews to explore the role of memory in the present. Fourth, historical organizational memory traces the institutionalization of organizational memory through archival research. From the analysis, we argue that historical organization studies are increasingly established, and interest in ‘uses of the past’ has contributed to the rise of retrospective organizational memory. However, historiographical reflexivity – a new concept for organization studies – focuses attention on engaging with both history and collective memory, and on the distinct methodological choices between archival and retrospective methods.

scholarly journals Living up to the past? Ideological sensemaking in organizational transition

Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mairi Maclean ◽  
Charles Harvey ◽  
John A. A. Sillince ◽  
Benjamin D. Golant
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Organizational History ◽  
Organizational Transition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Top Managers ◽  
Over Time

This article builds upon archival and oral-history research on organizational change at Procter & Gamble from 1930 to 2000, focusing on periods of transition. It examines historical narrative as a vehicle for ideological sensemaking by top managers. Our empirical analysis sheds light on continuities in the narratives they offer, through which the past emerges as a recurrent lever of strategic manoeuvres and re-orientations. This reveals that while organizational history is sometimes regarded as a strategic asset or intrinsic part of collective memory, it is also re-enacted as a shared heritage, implying responsibilities. Executives (re)interpret the past and author the future, maintaining the historical narrative while using interpellation to ensure ideological consistency over time. The interpellative power of rhetorical narrative helps to recast organizational members as participants in an ongoing drama. In this way executives claim their legitimate right to initiate and manage organizational transition.

Exploring the Role of IS in Dynamic Capabilities

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Duhan ◽  
Margi Levy ◽  
Philip Powell
Keyword(s):  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Dynamic Capability ◽  
Sustainable Competitive Advantage ◽  
Capability Development ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Systemic View

Resource-based theory suggests that firms develop idiosyncratic capabilities that contribute to sustainable competitive advantage when they are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. The successful use of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) has been linked to improved firm performance. Recent literature suggests that a deeper understanding of what capability means in practice may be gained from a disaggregation into component competences and resources. A better understanding of the role of IS/IT in business level capability may be achieved through a fuller articulation, both of the capability itself, and the contribution of IS/IT, together with an evaluation of the effectiveness in delivering sustainable competitive advantage. A dynamic capabilities perspective explains the way firms adapt capabilities to changing market environments over time. This paper explores these propositions through an exploratory case study using a framework derived from a resource-based and systemic view of the firm. The analysis suggests a dynamic Capability Development Model through which the implications and potential for IS and IT over time may be understood. The paper addresses three issues. First, it offers a better articulation of what capability concepts mean in practice. Second, it takes a disaggregated understanding of capabilities, and third, it sheds light on the dynamics of capabilities.

Therapeutic forgetting, agonistic remembrance: Conflicting memories of Izmir’s Kültürpark and contested narratives in contemporary Turkey

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802092143
Author(s):  
Emre Gönlügür ◽  
Devrim Sezer
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Memory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities

This article proposes to read the history of Izmir’s Kültürpark as symptomatic of Turkey’s troubled relationship with its political past and urban heritage. Combining insights from political theory, urban and architectural history, and memory studies for a transdisciplinary analysis, it problematizes the oblivion surrounding Kültürpark and explores the ways in which this collective amnesia is questioned by contemporary artists and civic initiatives. First, we examine how Kültürpark rose on a foundation of forgetting of the uprooting of Izmir’s non-Muslim communities from their homeland and the disappearance of their cultural traces from collective memory. Second, we explore how contemporary artistic and civic interventions that engage with the themes of remembrance and coming to terms with the past contest highly selective memory constructs. Third, we raise the question of whether the agonistic debates on the national narratives about the past might open up a new memoryscape and signal a relatively late ‘memory turn’ in Turkey. Finally, we argue that these artistic and civic interventions might shed new light on the theoretical disputes in memory studies, in particular on the debates about cosmopolitan and agonistic modes of remembering. More specifically, we suggest that the recent memory turn Turkey has been experiencing demonstrates that these two modes of remembering are not mutually exclusive.

Framing Variations and Collective Memory

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Schuman ◽  
Amy Corning ◽  
Barry Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Separate Experiment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

Central to American identity have been public memories of events like the struggle for independence and the achievements of key figures from the past. The individual most often subject to hagiographic accounts is Abraham Lincoln, with emphasis both on his epic achievements in saving the Union and ending slavery and on his personal characteristics, such as honesty and the motivation to transcend his “backwoods” childhood and attain positions of local, state, and national leadership. However, a recent study based on extensive survey data found that Lincoln’s connection to emancipation provided the primary content of beliefs about him for most Americans today, with other beliefs mentioned much less often. Our present research supports that emphasis when presidential actions are the focus, but a randomized survey-based experiment shows that with a type of questioning that reflects the distinction between “essence” and “action”—inner character versus public achievements—beliefs about the former become at least as prominent as beliefs about the latter. Preliminary evidence to this effect is replicated decisively in a separate experiment, and the study is then extended to consider changes over time in indicators of essence versus action. Our research highlights the importance of how inquiries are framed, and they show that variations in framing, including those that are unintended, can enlarge our understanding of collective memory of Lincoln and of collective memory generally.

scholarly journals Communication and Collective Memory

Communication ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Edy
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Shared Meaning ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Specific Discipline

The term “collective memory” refers to the shared meaning a group of people gives the past. Research on the phenomenon is highly interdisciplinary; collective memory is studied in at least five major academic disciplines: communication, sociology, psychology, history, and anthropology. It is also studied around the globe, with major research literatures in French, German, and Hebrew as well as in English, and case studies ranging across an even greater diversity of communities. The literature’s richness has given rise to several terms referring to essentially the same phenomenon: shared memory, public memory, social memory, and cultural memory. What distinguishes work on collective memory and communication is its emphasis on the production and circulation of shared meaning rather than the specific discipline in which the work is produced. Scholarship in collective memory usually adopts a social-constructionist perspective. Meanings assigned to the past are dynamic and commonly influenced by current circumstances. Scholars explore the limits of social construction in the context of past events that actually occurred, debate the ethics of representation, and theorize the social and technological forces affecting the production and circulation of shared meaning. However, critiques of representation grounded solely in their historical inaccuracies have largely been abandoned as theoretically unproductive. This article offers an overview of the field’s richness rather than an exhaustive listing of all the research that has been done. It is not limited to work produced by communication scholars but instead includes research generated in a variety of disciplines that speaks to the ways we develop and convey shared meanings for the past. Thus, it identifies literature flowing from differing conceptualizations of collective memory and considers the communicative aspects of a variety of social objects and practices, from film and journalism to memorials and museums. It also includes work on how collective memory functions in social life. Embracing the global nature of scholarship on collective memory, studies conducted in communities around the world are included. However, only work available in English is included, which means some evolving European approaches to communication and collective memory may be absent or referred to in secondary sources.

The structure of mnemonic revolutions

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Mihai-Stelian Rusu
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social System ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Theoretical Formula ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Major Break ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article proposes an evolutionary model of collective memory built on the concept of mnemonic revolution. It tries to go beyond the apparently mutual exclusive theories existing in sociological literature by integrating them into a comprehensive conceptualization. The first part of the study begins with the presentation of competing theories of collective memory developed over time. The second step presents the theoretical formula resulting from the adoption of a broader time frame (longue durée). This formula also takes into consideration the introduction of the concepts of mnemonic revolution and mnemonic reform. Mnemonic revolution is defined as a major break occurred in the structure of collective memory, which succeeds in a sociopolitical revolution, whereby the entire representation of the past is abandoned and the social labor of constructing a new retrospective vision of the past is initiated. Mnemonic reform includes the adjustable changes and the superficial reconfiguration through which the general image of the past that is incorporated into the collective memory is slightly calibrated depending on the evolution of the social system. The final part presents in a synthetic manner the way in which I sought the empirical validation of the notions developed in order to capture the dynamics of collective memory.

Picturing the past: The Berlin Wall at 25

2017 ◽  
Vol 79 (8) ◽  
pp. 701-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Somerstein
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Journalism History ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
25Th Anniversary ◽  
The Past ◽  
Textual Representations ◽  
Different Cultures

Although the mass media is an important tool that audiences rely on to learn about the past, the relationship among journalism, history, and memory is still underdeveloped; visual collective memory, like visual studies in other subfields, has received even less attention than written and textual representations of collective memory. To address that gap, this article uses a qualitative content analysis to assess how 15 newspapers commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s opening through photographs. Newspapers from countries that were capitalist and communist in 1989 are compared to identify the ways that different cultures ‘remember’ the same past. Five genres of images emerged: iconic photographs, memorials, metonymic and mythological portraits, metonymic relics, and images of resistance, though these genres were framed differently depending on a country’s political system in 1989. In comparing this cross-cultural collective memory, this study looks at what these visual commemorations reveal about cross-cultural anniversary practices, an area of memory studies that has received little attention.

SCULPTING THE PAST IN PRECLASSIC MESOAMERICA: OLMEC STONE MONUMENTS AND THE PRODUCTION OF SOCIAL MEMORY

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Jillian Mollenhauer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Stone Monuments ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Over Time

AbstractScholars encountering the monolithic sculptures of the Gulf lowland Olmec since the early twentieth century have frequently employed the term “monument” to describe these works. Often the word has been applied in reference to the formal qualities of the sculptures as well as to their antiquity. The function of monuments as sites of public remembering, however, has never been fully explored in relation to these works. This article discusses the evidence for, and implications of, viewing certain Olmec sculptures as public monuments intended to generate, transform, and erase the social memory of Olmec populations. Case studies of sculptural contexts suggest that such monuments were subject to diachronic transpositions and transformations in order to affect shifts in the collective memory over time. They remain as physical testaments to the maneuverings of Olmec elites within complex and ever-changing power relations that relied on the process of memory-making as part of the political stratagem.

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